Another surreal provocation from Peter Strickland, Flux Gourmet sees him continuing to mine a retro 1970s look and feel while forging ahead into territory uniquely his own. Indeed Flux Gourmet may be his most intensely personal film to date, the central idea being inspired by his own musical adventures with the Sonic Catering Band who, like the main characters here, made experimental electronic music using the cooking of food as one of their sound sources. They also, appropriately enough, supply the score for the film.

The sonic pioneers in Flux Gourmet are a barely functional trio (they spend some of the film trying to come up with a suitable name for themselves but can’t quite decide who they are), consisting of radical vegetarian, feminist and the trio’s notional leader, Elle di Elle (Strickland regular Fatma Mohamed) and her former lovers Billy Rubin (Asa Butterfield) and Lamina Propria (Ariane Labed). Their skills with a mic-ed up frying pan and amplified food blender have brought them to the attention of Jan Stevens (Gwendoline Christie), head of the Sonic Catering Institute, an ill-defined philanthropic arts centre which seems to be remarkable understaffed but where Stevens encourages “the artistic pursuit of alimentary and cultural salvation.” At the institute, the group are groomed by Stevens for their first performance, shadowed by down-at-heel writer Stones (Makis Papadimitriou) who not only narrates (in subtitled Greek) but has been employed to interview the performers and document their progress, while all the time battling a worry gastro-intestinal affliction and trying to find a way to fit in.

Things become increasingly strange and strained as the days wear on – the action, such that it is (very little actually happens in the film though that might have been Strickland’s point), is broken up into chapters each with their own seemingly meaningless epithets, like “The Mouth is the Light Thereof,” “The Stomach is the Plight Thereof”, “The Bowel is the Night Thereof”, all of them perhaps derived from the Sonic Catering Band’s 2002 piece The Lamb is the Light Thereof), several increasingly frantic performances take place that become ever more violent and all the while rejected and embittered performance troupe The Mangrove Snacks (who “can’t even do transgression very well”) are lurking around the edges threatening violence of their own.

Like all of Strickland’s films, Flux Gourmet exists in its own alternate universe, a hermetically sealed world where its own logic holds the very odd story together and into which you have to buy completely if there’s any hope of the film working for you at all. Strickland’s love of the Italian giallo, most obviously expressed in Berberian Sound Studio (2012), is discernible throughout Flux Gourmet (the sinister, threatening phone calls that Stevens is subjected to could have been taken from any early 70s Italian thriller) and with its enigmatic institute, cast of oddly named characters and emphasis on body horror, it’s somewhat reminiscent of David Cronenberg too. Peter Greenaway might be another influence.

The reflexive nature of the film hinted at by Strickland’s association with the Sonic Catering Band laos encompasses several references to Strickland’s earlier works. In Berberian Sound Studio a sonic artist, played by Toby Jones, slowly losses his marbles while also making sound with food items, consumed and transformed by his creative endeavours; an audio recording plays a part in his Jesus Franco tribute The Duke of Burgundy (2004); and the trance-like, imaginary shopping expeditions that Stevens makes the band enact might just remind you of In Fabric (2018).

It all sounds like it could be very pretentious indeed and there will be some who perhaps see it that way. One suspects that Strickland isn’t taking it as seriously as some commentators have however, the film being shot through with strange, offbeat humour. It’s all too absurd to take literally and is often just laugh out loud silly – one scene, which may tickle the funny bones of musicians more than it does others, revolves around an earnest discussion about the alienating and “disruptive” use of a flanger pedal and manages to cut to the core of the characters’ pretentions – “I’m just trying to protect your vision,” argues Stevens. How seriously we’re meant to take all this is up for debate, but one suspects that Strickland was at least being a little playful among all the oddness. It manages to be self-indulgent, very funny, ridiculous and even deeply disturbing all at the same time. There are moments of real horror to be found here, as when a naked, blood-spattered Elle batters herself to a pulp with a microphone as part of the trio’s debut performance.

Everything about Flux Gourmet is weird – the story, the characters, the music, the sex – but if you’ve enjoyed Strickland’s earlier films, you’ll be aware of what to expect. And even then, Strickland might just pull the rug from under you at times. You may not understand exactly what Strickland is trying to say here (it’s likely that Strickland is the only person who actually knows what it’s about, but it leaves room for many diverse interpretations); You may find the characters insufferable (Stones is the only part-way likable character in the film, the rest being disagreeable eccentrics and up themselves performance artists). You might even find that it runs out of interesting things to say in a rather flabby mid-section. But it’s such a gorgeous looking and sounding film, with some marvellously hypnotic sequences, that you’re bound to get something positive from it. It’s a strange film with “future cult favourite” stamped all over it and it might not be Strickland’s best work, but it is several cuts above much of what else was being released in 2022.